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Abraham Bolden First Black Secret Service
Agent For JFK Bolden Was Framed Because He
Knew To Much

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abraham Bolden (born January 19, 1935) is an American former United States Secret Service agent
and author.

Biography

Abraham Bolden grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois .[l] After
receiving a degree in music from Lincoln University of Missouri , [2]
he began his professional career as an Illinois state trooper . He
joined the Secret Service in 1960 during the Eisenhower
administration. In 1961, he became the first African American
member of the Secret Service's Presidential Protective Division after
being appointed by President John F. Kennedy . [3] According to
Bolden, he first met Kennedy on April 28, 1961 while working an
event at the McCormick Place in Chicago.[4] Bolden said that
Kennedy personally invited him to join the White House detail. [4]
He worked in the dual capacities of guarding the President and
investigating counterfeiting. [5]

Bolden was arraigned in Chicago on May 20, 1964 on federal
charges that he had solicited a bribe from a counterfeiting ring that
he had helped break.[6] He was accused of seeking $50,000 in
exchange for a secret file on the investigation.^!] The government's
case rested primarily on the testimony of two men, Frank Jones and Joseph Spagnoli, both facing

felony charges originating from the same Secret Service
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upcoming trials before the same Chicago court. The case
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The copy of the secret government file on the Spagnoli
counterfeiting operation that Bolden allegedly put up for
sale was never recovered, last being seen in the Chicago
offices of the Secret Service, disappearing before charges
were brought against Bolden.

Bolden was not accused of receiving or was he ever found
to be in possession of any illicit funds from the accused
* felons who testified against him. He maintained his
innocence, asserting that he had been framed because he
planned to expose dereliction among the agents assigned to
guard Kennedy in front of the Commission. The Secret
Service denied Bolden's claims. United States Attorney for

the Northern District of Illinois, Edward Hanrahan , was
quoted in news reports from May 1964, as calling Bolden' s
assertion of "overall general laxity" of Secret Service agents
assigned to the late President Kennedy, and Bolden's belief
he was prosecuted for doing so, as "fantastic." Hanrahan
implied Bolden should have brought the charges in 1961.
Bolden claimed he did just that, to James J. Rowley, the
head of the Secret Service, but without result. [9]

Bolden's first jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction, at
which time presiding judge Joseph Sam Perry issued an
Allen charge in which he expressed his belief that Bolden
was guilty but that the jury was free to disregard his
opinion. The jury remained deadlocked, and Perry declared
a mistrial on July 11, 1964. In the retrial, Bolden was
convicted 12-0, and Judge Perry sentenced him to six years
in prison.[3] Bolden appealed his conviction to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit , based in
part on Perry's Allen charge in the first trial. Bolden claimed
that the charge was evidence that Perry was not impartial
and that his failure to recuse himself denied Bolden a fair

trial. Further, in the second trail before Judge Perry on

August 12, 1964, the prosecution's case featured testimony

by indicted counterfeiter Joseph Spagnoli. In his own later trial for counterfeiting, held before the same
Judge Perry, Spagnoli confessed that he had perjured himself when he testified against Bolden.
Spagnoli said Prosecutor Richard Sikes had told him to lie. [10] The Appeals Court upheld Bolden's
conviction in a decision issued December 29, 1965. [8]

Following his release from prison, Bolden worked as
a quality control supervisor in the automotive
industry until his retirement in 2001. [11]

In January 1978, Abraham Bolden gave testimony on
his experiences as an agent with the Secret Service to
investigators of the Select Committee on
Assassinations of the US House of Representatives .

The Final Report of that Committee, released in
March 1979 included these conclusions: "The Secret
.Service possessed information that was not properly
(analyzed, investigated, or used by the Secret Service
in connection with the president's trip to Dallas; in
addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were
inadequately prepared to protect the president from a
sniper." [12]

Bolden was interviewed for the 2006 television
documentary Conspiracy Files: The JFK
Assassination based on information in the book
Ultimate Sacrifice by Lamar Waldron . [13] The
program asserted that mobster John Roselli was
responsible for framing Bolden. [13]

The Echo From Dealy
Plaza

In 2008, Bolden published his memoir,
The Echo From Dealey Plaza. [1 4] He was
interviewed about the book by NPR's
Farai Chideya .[15]

In his memoir, Bolden claimed to have
overheard Secret Service agents say that
they would not protect President Kennedy
from an assassination:

[President Kennedy] alienated Southerners
and conservatives around the country,
most of whom were already suspicious of
him. In this, the Secret Service reflected
the more backward elements of America.
Many of the agents with whom I worked
were products of the South.... I heard some members of the White House detail say that if shots
were fired at the president, they'd take no action to protect him. A few agents vowed that they
would quit the Secret Service rather than give up their lives for Kennedy. [16]

NEW DEVELOPMENTS
rM\f ALLEGED JFK PLOT REVEALED **•

W ^ ' BMGeHT: JFK TARGETED IN CHICAGO STATION ROOM

Personal

Bolden 1 s wife, Barbara, died in 2005. [17]

Portrayals in fiction

Abraham Bolden appears in the 2011 television miniseries The Kennedys . He is depicted joining the
President's protective detail and later President Kennedy turns to him as a sounding board during the
crisis surrounding the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi . Bolden is portrayed by
Rothaford Gray.

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Full text of "Abraham Bolden First Black Secret Service Agent For JFK Bolden Was Framed Because He Knew To Much.pdf (PDFy mirror)"

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